By Hannah Smith, Library Graduate Trainee

The Old Library’s new exhibition opens to the public on 19th September. But how is an exhibition of rare books curated and prepared?

Four hundred and forty years ago, Sir Thomas Smith bequeathed his extensive library to his alma mater, Queens’ College. His instructions were brusque: collect them within twelve days of his death, or Peterhouse would have them instead. Gruff, learned, acerbically funny – the same personality is evident in this story as in the annotations and doodles in his books.

Sir Thomas Smith (1513-1577) was a Tudor ambassador, Secretary of State and political writer, but above all he was a humanist scholar. His books, around sixty-five of which are still in the Old Library, range in subject from classical archaeology to contemporary zoology. With a collection this diverse, where is a librarian to begin in curating an exhibition? What follows is an account of the creation of Books and Power in Tudor England, from first concept to final caption.

Before May

Thanks to the generosity of the Heritage Lottery Fund, Queens’ is undertaking a two-year project to catalogue the early printed books of the Old Library and make the collections more accessible to the public. Events, schools outreach and exhibitions form part of this endeavour.

HLF Project Associate Lucille and College Librarian Tim are already well acquainted with Smith’s collection. Detailed bibliographic records of each book have been completed, with notes on their annotations, bindings and provenance. These prove to be invaluable to the new graduate trainee, Hannah, who arrives just as work on the exhibition begins and has some catching up to do.

May

The project team begin reading in earnest. Smith had two biographers, one writing at the end of the seventeenth century and the other in the 1960s. We work our way through both and note the biographers’ wildly different attitudes to Smith and his achievements. Strype, the first biographer, is elegiac in his praise. Dewar, the more recent writer, celebrates his achievements, but presents his life as a series of tragedies. The more we learn about Smith, the clearer it becomes that both stances are legitimate; Smith was remarkably intelligent, influential and well-connected, but in many ways he was also vulnerable, susceptible to the influence of others. He’s a fascinating subject.

June

Smith certainly was intimidatingly well-read; Strype’s emphatic praise seems much more reasonable now that we are reading around the subjects that Smith knew back to front: history, law, sciences and mathematics, astronomy, astrology (all of these represented in his library in classical and contemporary texts), the pronunciation of ancient Greek, the colonisation of Ireland… The list continues. The sheer scale of the task before us becomes apparent.

July

One by one, each of Smith’s surviving books is examined thoroughly. We sort them into subjects and make a note of the shelfmark of the book, its condition and subject and, most importantly, what marginalia it contains. Most of Smith’s books bear his signature on the title page, sometimes ‘Smith’, sometimes ‘Smyth’, often a latinised ‘Smithus’.

A spreadsheet of Smith’s books, with notes on the subject, condition and marginalia of each one.

It becomes obvious that certain books, or even certain chapters of books, were read and annotated repeatedly. In the context of the story of his life, we begin to see how he turned to these books for personal direction. In a book on mining and mineralogy he has made notes only next to passages that relate to the transmutation of one metal element into another using acid. It makes sense in light of the fact that Smith was defrauded in an alchemical scheme (the conman claimed to be able to turn iron into copper using nitric acid). In another book, this time a classical work of medicine, Smith made notes around a passage on the paralysis of the tongue, underlining the most emotive words. Developing what was almost certainly cancer of the throat and unable to speak in 1576, he wrote to William Cecil, ‘what pleasure can a man have of my years when he cannot speak as he would’.

Hannah goes on a training course on the use of special collections materials in exhibitions. Serif fonts, it turns out, are the most helpful for the visually impaired, but sans serif work best for dyslexic readers.

We consider structuring the exhibition around the chronology of Smith’s life, from his lowly birth in Saffron Walden to his legacy in the present day, but it is becoming clear that his books, and his method of reading them, are a window into the broader intellectual and political culture of his time. Books were a source of power for Smith and other ‘intellectuals in office’, more so than they had ever been before. We arrive at our title.

August

With only a month until Open Cambridge and the unveiling of the new exhibition, there is no time to lose. It’s time to decide which books will feature. Books are added, removed and swapped around many times before we settle on the final configuration. Like our library, the exhibition has an emphasis on Renaissance Humanism. The final titles for the cases are:

Thomas Smith and reading as a ‘trigger for action’

Thomas Smith and the advancement of Humanism in Cambridge

Exploring the Renaissance mind

Reading the natural world

Reading the natural world: ‘natural magic’

Thomas Smith: Library as university

Now comes the most time-consuming task: turning our research into clear, concise copy for the booklet, posters and captions. Tim, Lucille and Hannah each take two cases and get to work. Painful as it is after immersing ourselves in obscure topics such as the ancient Heruli tribe, the distillation of aqua vitae or the architecture of Smith’s mansion, often we have to kill our darlings if we want to produce succinct copy that visitors are willing to read. We draft, edit and re-draft.

Trying out new configurations; books are moved, withdrawn and re-added before we settle on our final book list.

A local graphic design company will be producing our exhibition materials. Lucille sends them high-quality photographs of some of Smith’s annotations and doodles to be included in the booklet.

Several of Smith’s annotations are photographed, to be included in the booklet and display boards.

September

One week remains until Open Cambridge; tickets are selling out. After six months on display the Erasmus exhibition is taken down, and the work of installing Books and Power begins.

Each book requires its own purpose-built book cradle. Made from stiff cardboard, they support the bindings of the books and lend a uniform look to the cases. It’s imperative that the cradle fits the book exactly, and that the book doesn’t extend past its natural opening (usually no more than 120 degrees).

Hannah makes a book cradle for a small book with a particularly narrow opening.

Over the weekend of Open Cambridge almost two hundred visitors pass through the doors of the Old Library. As usual, many comment on the smell of the old books, the reverence they feel, the impulse to whisper. Smith’s books are so full of humour and verve that they cut through that, though. Few things are more enjoyable than examining a historical object and in it discovering a relatable, human personality. We will certainly miss his.

Open Cambridge: Hannah introduces a tour group to the Old Library and the exhibition.

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Books and Power in Tudor England: The Renaissance Library of Sir Thomas Smith will be open in the Old Library from 9th October to 3rd November, on weekday afternoons between 1:30 and 4:30. Admission is free.

As part of the Festival of Ideas College Librarian Tim Eggington and Perne Librarian Scott Mandelbrote will give a talk entitled ‘Reading books in sixteenth-century Cambridge’ to accompany the exhibition. Book via the Festival of Ideas website.

By Hannah Smith, Graduate Library Trainee

In the previous post, we discovered that Queens’ Old Library holds books from the dispersed library of William Cecil Lord Burghley, chief adviser to Queen Elizabeth I and Secretary of State. An annotation within one of these books, the bindings of which are stamped with the Cecil family arms, confirms that at one time they belonged to Humphrey Tindall, President of Queens’ from 1579 to 1614, who subsequently donated them to the College. These books, and in particular their remarkable and rare bindings, provide evidence of the relationship between these two men.

However, that Cecil, a man with power and responsibility second only to the Queen, should secure this position for Tindall despite outcry among the Fellows begs the questions: why did Cecil arrange Tindall’s appointment, and what ideas was he attempting to propagate by the donation of these books?

William Cecil had intervened in matters of Queens’ College appointments before. That the Queen’s chief advisor would do so did so speaks of the influence that the University’s teaching had on the political and intellectual life of the nation. In an era of class immobility, men who had the opportunity of receiving an education at Oxford or Cambridge often did so with the guarantee of a political career on the other side; very soon, ideas taught and stances taken in the universities would filter through the upper strata of government.

Portrait of William Cecil. Thomas Birch, The Heads of Illustrious Persons of Great Britain (1743)

However, in 1576, the year of Tindall’s appointment, Cecil was responding to both national and personal crises: at the beginning of the year he had backed an unsuccessful marriage suit between the Queen and François, Duke of Alençon and Anjou.

It was imperative that the Queen produced an heir to the throne; the Elizabethan religious settlement, created to provide a middle way under which Catholic and Protestant traditions could coalesce, was precarious, and was unlikely to survive the political instability of a contested throne. The match between Elizabeth and Anjou had for a short time developed into a relationship sufficiently romantic for the pair to exchange betrothal rings (although these were removed the next day, at the urging of the Privy Council). Eventually, though, the problem of Anjou’s Catholic faith was deemed insurmountable.

By the time that this match had been abandoned Cecil, himself a passionate reformer, had left himself vulnerable to suggestions that he was a papist sympathiser, or, at the very least, a lukewarm and changeable believer; either charge was damning. It was now more pressing than ever that he promoted the religious settlement and its moderate reform.

It was not unusual for Cecil, as well as his co-Secretary of State and close friend, Queens’ alumnus Thomas Smith, to require Cambridge preachers to support the monarch’s agenda in their sermons; indeed, after deviating from their instructions the Bishop of Winchester, Stephen Gardiner, was confined to the Tower of London for five years.

The vacancy at Queens’ College afforded Cecil an opportunity. By appointing the right candidate, he could ensure that the College continued to teach the next generation of politicians and bishops to uphold the Elizabethan religious settlement.

Tindall was well known as a defender of religious orthodoxy, and found no theological objection to the Queen’s religious agenda. Licensed as a preacher of the University of Cambridge in 1576, as well as a parish priest and the chaplain of Robert Dudley, his influence in matters of theology was far-reaching. He was young, too, and presumably could hold the role of President for several decades, advocating for the religious settlement even after the death of the Queen.

Girolamo Zanchi, De Tribus Elohim (On the Trinity, Eternal Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Book XIII), 1572. Note the dedication to Edmund Grindal.

Among Cecil’s books given to Tindall was this, written by Girolamo Zanchi, an Italian priest and supporter of the Protestant Reformation. Zanchi’s books, some of which are still in print, were sufficiently controversial that he spent the latter half of his life in exile, moving from city to city in Western Europe. This book on the doctrine of the Trinity was addressed to Edmund Grindal, Bishop of London and later of Canterbury. Grindal, like Tindall, benefited from the patronage of William Cecil, who urged him to use his position to promote the “middle way” between the vying Puritans and Catholics. His efforts in this area were by and large successful, and he was well respected; perhaps the gift of this particular book was a reminder to Tindall of the success he might enjoy if he followed Grindal’s example.

Unsurprisingly, most of Cecil’s books at Queens’ are works of theology, written by Protestant theologians. A notable exception, though, is a collection of sermons by Johann Ferus, the endpaper of which bears Tindall’s signature. Ferus, also known as Johann Wild, was a German Catholic preacher of the Franciscan Order, born at the turn of the fifteenth century. Wild was famed for the eloquence and zeal of his sermons, which won him the respect of Protestants as well as Catholics in a nation divided by the Reformation. His Evangelical preaching style and his promotion of a German middle way resulted in the inclusion of many of his published works in the Roman Catholic Church’s Index Librorum Prohibitorum (list of prohibited books). Tindall must have appreciated the significance of the gift: a guide to persuasive preaching, and an example of another figure who, like Grindal, had earned respect within both denominations by promoting a middle way.

Until the eighteenth century it was usual for books to be shelved with the fore-edge outwards. The Old Library was no exception. Here someone, possibly Cecil or Tindall, has added the title in ink.

Unlike the majority of his predecessors Humphrey Tindall was never promoted to the bishopric, and remained at Queens’ until his death in 1614. Oral tradition has it that he was offered the throne of Bohemia but refused it, saying that “he had rather be Queen Elizabeth’s subject than a foreign prince”. These words, inscribed on his memorial in Ely Cathedral, are all the more remarkable because his presidency was beset by complaints and rebellions. However, by retaining the presidency of Queens’ College for the remainder of Elizabeth I’s reign and well into that of James I, he ensured that the College, and the University, remained committed to the Elizabeth religious settlement and to the Anglican Church that arose from it.

These remarkable books and their bindings shed light not only on Tindall’s path to the presidency of the College, but also on the University’s political and religious importance during the English Reformation. Stances that were taken in the University would soon spread to the leaders and lawmakers of the nation at large; William Cecil ensured that these ideas, like his books, travelled from Cambridge to Parliament and back again.

From their invention in late antiquity until the twentieth century animal skin was essential to the production of bound books. It is widely known that Medieval manuscripts were copied on vellum (i.e. calfskin) pages or leaves and that both manuscript volumes and early printed books had bindings made of leather, principally from calf, sheep, goat and pig. Skin was, however, not the only animal product to have been used in books. How else might animals have been used to make books?

One lesser known component in the production of early printed books was cow horn, used to make ‘horn windows’. Less costly than glass, cow horn had been widely used in the middle ages to make actual windows. To do this, cow horns were soaked in water to soften them, heated and then cut and rolled into strips. A famous extant example is the horn window at Barley Hall, York.

In bookbinding, a horn window (also called fenestra) denotes a rectangular piece of transparent horn that is fixed to the front board of a book as protection for a paper or vellum label (see above).

There are in Queens’ Old Library three volumes that retain horn windows, all of them formerly owned by the same person. In each case the horn is held in place by a brass frame that encloses a parchment slip on which is inscribed details of how the book came to be in Queens’ Library:

The label shown above informs us that this book was given to Queens’ Library on 6 January 1562 by Thomas Yale. He was a distinguished civil lawyer who became Chancellor and Vicar-General to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Matthew Parker. Thomas Yale was also a fellow of Queens’ College between the years 1544-57 and served as College Bursar in 1556.

Before working for the Anglican Matthew Parker, Yale defended the Catholic Church within the University during the reign of Queen Mary I. Indeed he subscribed to the 1555 Roman Catholic articles affirming the doctrines of Rome and condemning the errors of the reformers. The following year, he assisted in the search for heretical books during a visitation of the delegates of Cardinal Pole, then Chancellor of the University of Cambridge and (last Roman Catholic) Archbishop of Canterbury.

The copy of Eusebius mentioned in the Donors’ book (above) cannot now be found in the Old Library. (It could simply be missing or the Library could have rebound the volume together with another volume as a result of which the original donor label could have been lost.)

Label pastedown on front pastedown [M.12.7]

All three of these known Yale books bear a horn window that displays a similar donor inscription on the front cover. However, a further two-volume set (Origen, Operum tomi duo priores (Paris, 1522) [M.12.7-8]) not recorded in the Donors’ Book also bears a Yale donor label but on the front pastedown (i.e. inside front cover) of each volume rather than on the front cover under a horn window. It seems likely that these volumes were rebound in the seventeenth century, at which time the original labels were transferred inside the volumes and the horn windows were discarded.

Of the Yale books, two (Cyprian and Tertullian) are known to have shared a distinguished earlier owner prior to Yale. Their sixteenth-century blind-stamped bindings are ornately gilt-stamped with the initials ‘S.H.’ of Simon Heynes (or Haynes) (d. 1552) and the motto ‘Salus mea d[omi]n[u]s’ (The Lord, my salvation). Educated at Queens’, Heynes’ high-flying career included periods as Queens’ President (1529-37) and as Canon of Windsor, Prebendary of Westminster, and Dean of Exeter. He is remembered now specifically for his role as an early Reformer who assisted in the compilation of the first English liturgy.

After the 1534 Act of Supremacy when Henry VIII was recognised as ‘Supreme Head of the Church of England’, Heynes became an official anti-papal preacher in Cambridge, devoted to the Church of England cause. In March 1530, Heynes had helped to secure his university’s endorsement of Henry VIII’s case for a divorce.

Thomas Yale acquired these books through his wife, Joan (or Joanna) Walron (or Waleron), the widow of Simon Heynes, whom Yale married in 1561. It is interesting to note that Heynes (and then Yale) owned books by two Church fathers considered controversial by the Catholic Church (neither Tertullian nor Origin are recognized as saints due to their sometimes unorthodox theological positions).

Curiously, one of the volumes displays a somewhat blatant error committed by the binder when he was decorating the binding. Having omitted a letter ‘u’ from the motto (‘Salus mea d[omi]n[u]s’/The Lord, my salvation) he sought to rectify the problem by inserting the letter above.

Binder’s mistake [M.9.19]

Although no other books with horn windows survive in Queens’ Old Library today we know of at least one source that suggest the earlier existence of further examples. An entry in the College’s Bursars’ accounts (QC Book 4) mentions the purchase of material to build and nail the metal frame of horn windows for books bequeathed by Laurence Hollenden in 1585.

1585-86
[March] Item paide for the carriage of M[rs] Hollandes bookes geven to the Librarie and for carriage of 2 lres. xviiid
Item for twae chaynes for the same bookes. xiid
Item two hookes for them. iiid
Item horne and saddell nailes for the same bookes. iiid